sex worker rights

How did Northern Ireland lawmakers carve out an anti-abortion ‘ghetto’ within the UK?
Northern Ireland remains a blind spot for equality for women and members of the LGBTIQ community. Will Ireland’s abortion referendum change this?

Stephanie Williamson
11 June 2018

More than two weeks have passed since Ireland’s historic abortion referendum was won by a groundswell of grassroots feminist activism. A large majority (66.4%) voted to repeal the country’s eighth constitutional amendment, opening the door to proposed legislation to allow abortions up to 12 weeks.

Huge numbers of repeal campaigners and voters were young women – with a staggering 94% increase in the turnout of women aged 18-24, compared to the 2016 general election. The result reflected a frank rejection of decades of misogyny and the suffocating grip of church and state on women’s rights.

When I visited Uganda last year, I met a woman named Sarah*. As she relayed, from the moment she was born, Sarah’s life was shaped by inequality: She was born into poverty, with no support from her family, no access to education or health care, and no job opportunities in her rural town. As a young girl of 12, she moved to the city on her own looking for economic opportunity, where she was raped by an older man and became pregnant. Through her sheer will Sarah survived: She gave birth unattended and, with no other opportunities to provide for her child, ultimately engaged in sex work so that she and her baby daughter could survive. In Sarah’s part of town, the majority of women engage in sex work to make a living, some starting as early as age 12 or 13. They do not become sex workers because they want to; there are simply no other options to provide for themselves and their children.

Those alarmed by the bigotry-driven abortion policy, on both sides of the Irish border, should similarly be concerned by policies on prostitution that undermine sex workers’ safety.

As the slow-motion catastrophe of a Tory deal with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) unfolds, UK-wide attention has belatedly turned to the controversial positions held by the DUP on LGBT rights, same-sex marriage, climate change, and abortion. Unsurprisingly, feminists are appalled.

Ireland questioned on human rights of sex workers by UNInstitutional abuse and traveller ethnicity among issues raised by UN committee

Wed, Feb 15, 2017
Kitty Holland

A Government delegation to the United Nations has been criticised as “vague and unhelpful” in its responses to questions about abortion.

Ireland was examined on Wednesday by a UN committee on women’s rights, on compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). It is the first time Ireland has faced questioning by the Geneva-based CEDAW committee since 2005.

The delegation also heard calls for an international inquiry into symphysiotomy, for guarantees to protect the human rights of sex-workers and for measures to protect lone parents from poverty.

The Abortion Rights Campaign (ARC) and the Sex Workers’ Alliance Ireland (SWAI) are part of a larger, integrated movement for sexual rights and bodily autonomy. This includes maternity rights, access to contraception, and comprehensive sexuality education and information to name just a few. In a vision for a better world, we are building solidarity across movements and drawing out the synergies, as campaigns such as ours calling for abortion rights and sex workers’ rights do not exist in a vacuum. It is important to show our solidarity, because these campaigns represent different dimensions of a shared struggle to address different manifestations of the same underlying forces of oppression.